I’ve been using Vagrant for a several years now and love it. One of my few complaints was that each time I wanted to create a new machine I would need to edit my /etc/hosts file. Then I found the excellent Vagrant plugin named Landrush.

My hosts file went from this:

127.0.0.1 localhost
255.255.255.255 broadcasthost
::1 localhost
192.168.10.2 project1
192.168.10.3 project2
192.168.10.4 project4
192.168.10.5 project5
192.168.10.6 project6
192.168.10.7 project7
192.168.10.8 project8
192.168.10.9 project9

To this:

127.0.0.1 localhost
255.255.255.255 broadcasthost
::1 localhost

How to Install Landrush

Installing and using Landrush is really easy.

Step 1: Install the plugin

vagrant plugin install Landrush

Step 2: Add the Landrush configuration to your Vagrantfile

config.vm.hostname = "project1.vagrant.dev" # if not set yet
config.landrush.enabled = true

There are more options you can add which can be found here.

If you don’t want to use the TLD of vagrant.dev you can change it but keep it mind it will override that TLD on your computer. If you set your box’s hostname to something.google.com and set landrush.tld = google.com your searches won’t work very well unless you use Bing…nevermind, your searches still won’t work very well.

Step 3: Start up your vagrant box

vagrant up

That’s it. Landrush does everything else for you.

Test your box, project1.vagrant.dev should be pointing to the IP address of your vagrant box.

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I lent my newly upgraded Roam Mobility SIM card to my sister for a 2-day trip to Michigan. I told her I would foot the bill for her service if she would report back with some speed test screen shots. We both have an iPhone 5S and I was curious to see what kind of speeds her phone would get.

I double checked the locations in Michigan where she would be staying. According to both Roam Mobility’s website and T-Mobile’s site (the network Roam Mobility is actually using), they claimed LTE service would be available to her almost all of her trip.

Here are the results:

Detroit, Michigan

iPhone 5S on Roam Mobility in Detroit, Michigan - Map iPhone 5S on Roam Mobility in Detroit, Michigan - Speed Test

Outside of Ann Arbor, Michigan

iPphone 5s Roam Mobility, Outside Ann Arbor, Michigan - Map iPhone 5s Roam Mobility, Outside Ann Arbor, Michigan - Speed Test

Ann Arbor, Michigan

iPhone 5s Roam Mobility, Ann Arbor, Michigan - Speed Test

 

The 3G speeds are actually great…for 3G. But Roam Mobility now supports LTE. Why is the phone showing 3G?

Ok, my sister is pretty good with technology, but she could have messed something up, right?

We started some basic troubleshooting…

Is the iPhone 5S supported? Yep

Roam Mobility LTE 4G device list

Maybe LTE is turned off? Let’s check that because maybe changing SIM cards somehow turned off LTE.

No LTE option on iPhone with Roam Mobility

But where is the LTE option? I’m pretty sure that screen should show “enable LTE” not “Enable 3G”.

I checked Roam Mobility’s support documents and found this potentially useful page: How to enable 4G LTE on your iPhone or iPad

Roam Mobility - How to enable 4G LTE on iPhone

…but I don’t have an Enable LTE switch. At the bottom of the page:

If the feature is not available on your iPhone 5/5c/5s device, we recommend that you contact Apple customer service to troubleshoot and resolve the issue.

You can do this by visiting this Apple Support Article or visit your local Apple Store or Apple Authorized retailer.

If you have any further questions with other issues, please contact our care team via email or phone so we can ensure you have a great experience with our service.

I went to the Apple Support page and asked my sister to try some of the more reasonable suggestions. (Erasing the iPhone to start fresh is NOT an acceptable troubleshooting step for getting cheap US data roaming. It is a little more reasonable if you are at home, on Wi-Fi and you are trying to get your Canadian carrier to work.)

I contacted Roam Mobility support on August 7, 2014, first by email and then, after waiting a few hours, via Twitter.

Twitter conversation - Roam Mobility no LTE option iPhone 5S

So they are trying to blame this on Apple? Come on!

There are a number of people with the same issue on Twitter and Roam Mobility’s Facebook page.

I’d be perfectly happy if they would just acknowledge the issue and say they are working on it. I’d be ecstatic if they included a timeline. But blaming Apple? That’s pretty sad.

I did finally receive a reply to my email support request, 13 days later. Did I mention my sister’s trip was 2 days? It was an automated message that contained a link to the LTE support sections on their website.

Sigh.

For even having the ability to use LTE on Roam Mobility’s network I was forced to pay a $1.99 fee per SIM to “upgrade” my SIM cards to support LTE. I try not to think too hard about why this is even technically necessary because it’s only $2.  I don’t actually need LTE speeds, but since I’ve paid for the privilege, I want my iPhone saying it’s connected to their LTE network!

Despite their lack of LTE, I still need data when I travel to the US and I still don’t want to pay my Canadian carriers’ horrendous rates, so I’m sticking with the lesser of two evils, Roam Mobility on 3G, at least for now.

 

 

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I lent my newly upgraded Roam Mobility SIM card to my sister for a 2-day trip to Michigan. I told her I would foot the bill for her service if she would report back with some speed test screen shots. We both have an iPhone 5S and I was curious to see what kind of speeds her phone would get.

I double checked the locations in Michigan where she would be staying. According to both Roam Mobility’s website and T-Mobile’s site (the network Roam Mobility is actually using), they claimed LTE service would be available to her almost all of her trip.

Here are the results:

Detroit, Michigan

iPhone 5S on Roam Mobility in Detroit, Michigan - Map iPhone 5S on Roam Mobility in Detroit, Michigan - Speed Test

Outside of Ann Arbor, Michigan

iPphone 5s Roam Mobility, Outside Ann Arbor, Michigan - Map iPhone 5s Roam Mobility, Outside Ann Arbor, Michigan - Speed Test

Ann Arbor, Michigan

iPhone 5s Roam Mobility, Ann Arbor, Michigan - Speed Test

 

The 3G speeds are actually great…for 3G. But Roam Mobility now supports LTE. Why is the phone showing 3G?

Ok, my sister is pretty good with technology, but she could have messed something up, right?

We started some basic troubleshooting…

Is the iPhone 5S supported? Yep

Roam Mobility LTE 4G device list

Maybe LTE is turned off? Let’s check that because maybe changing SIM cards somehow turned off LTE.

No LTE option on iPhone with Roam Mobility

But where is the LTE option? I’m pretty sure that screen should show “enable LTE” not “Enable 3G”.

I checked Roam Mobility’s support documents and found this potentially useful page: How to enable 4G LTE on your iPhone or iPad

Roam Mobility - How to enable 4G LTE on iPhone

…but I don’t have an Enable LTE switch. At the bottom of the page:

If the feature is not available on your iPhone 5/5c/5s device, we recommend that you contact Apple customer service to troubleshoot and resolve the issue.

You can do this by visiting this Apple Support Article or visit your local Apple Store or Apple Authorized retailer.

If you have any further questions with other issues, please contact our care team via email or phone so we can ensure you have a great experience with our service.

I went to the Apple Support page and asked my sister to try some of the more reasonable suggestions. (Erasing the iPhone to start fresh is NOT an acceptable troubleshooting step for getting cheap US data roaming. It is a little more reasonable if you are at home, on Wi-Fi and you are trying to get your Canadian carrier to work.)

I contacted Roam Mobility support on August 7, 2014, first by email and then, after waiting a few hours, via Twitter.

Twitter conversation - Roam Mobility no LTE option iPhone 5S

So they are trying to blame this on Apple? Come on!

There are a number of people with the same issue on Twitter and Roam Mobility’s Facebook page.

I’d be perfectly happy if they would just acknowledge the issue and say they are working on it. I’d be ecstatic if they included a timeline. But blaming Apple? That’s pretty sad.

I did finally receive a reply to my email support request, 13 days later. Did I mention my sister’s trip was 2 days? It was an automated message that contained a link to the LTE support sections on their website.

Sigh.

For even having the ability to use LTE on Roam Mobility’s network I was forced to pay a $1.99 fee per SIM to “upgrade” my SIM cards to support LTE. I try not to think too hard about why this is even technically necessary because it’s only $2.  I don’t actually need LTE speeds, but since I’ve paid for the privilege, I want my iPhone saying it’s connected to their LTE network!

Despite their lack of LTE, I still need data when I travel to the US and I still don’t want to pay my Canadian carriers’ horrendous rates, so I’m sticking with the lesser of two evils, Roam Mobility on 3G, at least for now.

 

 

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I use Vagrant boxes for almost all of my development work. I recently came across this simple yet incredibly time-saving Vagrant tip. I use NFS to share files between my host computer and Vagrant box. While Vagrant makes this quite trivial to do Vagrant does require elevated permissions to mount the NFS share which means I need to enter my password everytime a Vagrant box starts up. This isn’t a huge deal as I only restart my Vagrant boxes a few times a week but I frequently will start up a box then go do something else while it boots and when I return later I see my box sitting at the password prompt. By adding a few lines to my /etc/sudoers file I just type vagrant up and I’m done.

1. Open up terminal. (CMD+SPACE, type in terminal)

2. Type in:
sudo visudo

3. Enter your password.

4. Add these lines to the bottom of the file.
Cmnd_Alias VAGRANT_EXPORTS_ADD = /usr/bin/tee -a /etc/exports
Cmnd_Alias VAGRANT_NFSD = /sbin/nfsd restart
Cmnd_Alias VAGRANT_EXPORTS_REMOVE = /usr/bin/sed -E -e /*/ d -ibak /etc/exports
%admin ALL=(root) NOPASSWD: VAGRANT_EXPORTS_ADD, VAGRANT_NFSD, VAGRANT_EXPORTS_REMOVE

In case you aren’t familiar with vim, press i to insert text, when done, press ESC, then : followed by wq then press enter.

Your done! Wait 5 minutes (because you just typed in your password like 30 seconds ago). Then type vagrant up from your project root and don’t enter your password.

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For years now, every time I went down to the USA, I would swap out my phone’s Canadian SIM card for a prepaid AT&T SIM card. This worked pretty well, but it was not without challenges. Now I use Roam Mobility. It isn’t perfect (although it’s close) but it is much easier and more convenient than using an actual US SIM card.

What I did before Roam Mobility

While buying the US SIM card is easy enough, successfully activating it is another story. To activate you need to enter a valid US address. Most of the Canadians I know live in Canada and do not have a US address. Usually I would just use my name at the hotel I was staying at, but it’s still not ideal and I feel a little bad about the potential junk mail AT&T might start sending them when my plan expires. You can’t just make up an address either. I actually wasted a SIM card trying that. In my experience, the address must be a valid US address.

Once you have the SIM card registered, you would then have to add money to the account. If you have a US credit card, adding money to your card is simple. You can make a payment during registration or later online. Without a US credit card, I was forced to use a third party service pinzoo. You can add money directly to your phone via their website and pay with Paypal. Once you know about pinzoo, it’s not too hard, but it’s still a bit of a hassle. Also, the last time I purchased airtime it cost me $50, as that was the only plan that would meet my needs. It wasn’t a bad price for a month of voice and data service, but I only needed it for 10 days.

When your trip is over, you switch your phone’s SIM back to your Canadian one. What do you do with the US SIM card? Well, if you are planning to visit the US again soon, you may be able to reuse the SIM. But watch out: AT&T’s prepaid SIM cards expire after 90 days if no additional money is put onto the account. I’ve never reused one of my US SIM cards since I typically don’t travel to the US more than a few times per year. As soon as I put my Canadian SIM back in my phone my US one goes right in the trash. In my case, I needed a new SIM card with each trip. I would actually buy AT&T SIM cards in bulk to get a better price.

I will say that once the account and plan were activated the service had always worked great. However, as you can see, there is much room for improvement in this process as I doubt the average person could be bothered to jump through all those AT&T hoops to get a SIM.

Note: I know I could have just visited an AT&T store once I crossed the border, but I much prefer having my cell phone and data working immediately after I cross the border. Besides, I don’t want to waste precious vacation time waiting in line at the mall to buy a cell phone plan.

Roam Mobility to the rescue

Roam Mobility solves these problems wonderfully. You can register with a Canadian address and pay with a Canadian credit card. Their plans are also very reasonable. Currently, for just $3.95 a day you get unlimited US calling, unlimited calling to Canada, unlimited text messages and 300MB of data. You also don’t have to buy a month of service. You can just buy 1 day at a time. Oh, and the best part: the SIM card doesn’t expire for a whole year! To keep the SIM active, just buy a cheap talk-only $2.95 1-day plan and you are good for another year. (I have paid between $4-$7 each for an AT&T SIM card).

Roam’s SIM cards are actually pretty expensive at $19.95 (they have deals occasionally) but since they don’t expire for a year it’s not a bad investment.

The not so great stuff about Roam Mobility

The data speed could be better. Our data speeds in Canada are actually pretty decent (at least where I travel), so getting used to the mediocre 3G was a step back. I have used Roam in New York, NY and Orlando, FL with my iPhone (4S, 5, 5S). The best speed I saw (once) was in New York at about 7Mbps. Typical speeds I experienced were between 2-4Mbps. In Orlando (and Disney World), all my best speeds were between 1-3Mbps and sometimes I was forced onto EDGE. On AT&T, my speeds were consistently double that a year prior.

Roam uses T-Mobile’s network and, well, AT&T’s network is just better at the moment (especially for iPhones) so slowness is to be expected. I should point out that the internet was perfectly usable most of the time. Photos took a little longer to upload than I’m used to, but it still got the job done. I made several phone calls back to Canada and had no issues with voice quality.

Now interestingly enough, Roam Mobility has just announced they will be launching an LTE network. This should help improve speeds immensely. The mediocre data speeds are the only drawback I can see currently with the service.

Alternatives: What about “Travel Packs”?

Over the last year or two, Canadian providers have started offering US data roaming packs. In my opinion they are still WAY overpriced compared to what Roam offers. Roam Mobility’s site has a pretty good (shocking) comparison here.

Conclusion

Overall I highly recommend Roam Mobility for anyone with an unlocked phone traveling in the US. They provide a much needed service, freeing Canadians from their money grubbing cell phone companies.

 

 

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